Recently, with progress in computers and communication, the communication by text, over a communication network, such as E-mail, instant messaging or chat, that is, the text communication, has become popular.
In oral communication, the feeling (state of mind) may be represented by strength of utterance, intonation, sounding and fastness of tempo. On the other hand, these are expressed, in the conventional text message, by the sorts (style) or size (point number) of standard fonts or color, such that the message is of unanimous static appearance, devoid of feeling, and hence is insipid and monotonous.
In Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication 2002-207671 and 2002-207673, there has been proposed a technique in which the text entered by a user may be changed in text attributes, such as style, point numbers or colors at the time of text input.
With this method, extremely complicated operations of selecting and highlighting a passage of an input text, the attribute of which is desired to be changed, selecting the font sort (style) from a pull-down menu, selecting the point number from a size pull-down menu and selecting the color from a color palette, and hence the method has not routinely been used in e.g. e-mail. Moreover, even if the attributes of the letters and characters are changed in this manner, it is difficult to transmit e.g. the feeling properly, based solely on the attributes of the letters or characters.
In Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication 2002-32306, there is disclosed a technique of detecting the phrase showing the feeling in the mail sentence to reflect the feeling in the movements of an animation (doll) at the time of displaying the mail. However, in this technique, only the movements of the doll are changed, while the doll itself remains unchanged. Additionally, the text itself is not changed.
Recently, the mobile terminal units, typified by mobile phones, have come into widespread use. With these mobile terminal units, it is possible to exchange text messages or browse Web data over a communication network, including the Internet.